Tag Archives: Arab-Israel conflict

Mob vs 1 man trapped in his car. The UN official implies the mob was the victim not the man that could have been killed by them.

A resident of Samaria who was attacked by an Arab lynch mob on his way home from grocery shopping was forced to open fire to defend himself Thursday, killing one of his attackers and wounding another.

The man, a social worker and father of eight from the town of Itamar in Samaria, was on his way home from the Rami Levy supermarket in Shaar Binyamin, when he found himself under attack by an angry mob of some 200 Arabs. INN

On Friday, the IDF and Shin Bet (Israel Internal Security) arrested the driver who used his ambulance to cut off the escape of a Jew being attacked by an angry mob of Arabs in Huwara. The Jew was forced to exit his car and open fire, killing one attacker and injuring an Associated Press reporter.

Arabs were rioting in Huwara near Nablus (Shechem) for three days. On Thursday, a Jew travelling in a car on Route 60, a major thoroughfare that passes through Huwara, was surrounded by a mob of about 200 Arabs. A Red Crescent Ambulance drove in front of his car, preventing the Jewish motorist from escaping. Approximately 20 Arabs attacked the car, smashing the front and rear windshields and causing serious damage to the vehicle. The driver exited his car and shot one attacker, killing him, and wounding a reporter who was in the crowd.

Overnight Thursday, Israeli security forces arrested at least two of the suspected attackers and impounded a bus believed to have transported rioters to the scene.The ambulance used to aid the attack was also impounded. BreakingNewsIsrael

Nickolay Mladenov, the United Nations SpecialCoordinator for the Middle East Peace Process.

The youth contingent of the National Unity Party is cooking a massive barbecue on Thursday, upwind from the prison in which over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners are holding a hunger strike. The succulent aroma of cooking meat will waft through Ofer Prison where the prisoners, most wanted for security offenses against Israelis, are protesting for better conditions.

“The time has come to stop listening to the hunger strikers and show them that we are not giving in to their whims,” ​​said Ophir Sofer, secretary-general of the National Union party. “We call upon the government and its leader to further worsen conditions for terrorists and to act with conviction for the release of the soldiers Goldin and Shaul who fought for us all.”

The hunger strike was called after a year and a half of negotiations with prison officials….

The hunger strike became the focus of controversy on Monday when its organizer, Marwan Barghouti, announced it in an op-ed in the New York Times. The NY Times presented Barghouti as ““a Palestinian leader and parliamentarian”, without mentioning that he is in an Israeli prison after being convicted of five counts of murder. The NY Times earned the ire of many, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who said, “Barghouti is a politician like Assad is a pediatrician”

Many believe the hunger strike is a ploy by Barghouti to shore up his waning political presence. Barghouti has been caught on video eating in his cell during hunger strikes he has called. BreakingNewsIsrael

Why don’t the Palestinians have their own country? Is it the fault of Israel? Of the Palestinians? Of both parties? David Brog, Executive Director of the Maccabee Task Force, shares the surprising answers.

Former Huffington Post journalist Hunter Stuart was pro-Palestinian, gradually his views changed about the Israel and the conflict when he moved to Jerusalem in 2015 to report on the region.

In the summer of 2015 I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region. I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was, viewing Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.

It wasn’t until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. When I traveled to the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story, a Palestinian kid pointed at me and shouted “Yehud!” which means “Jew” in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. I shouted at them in Arabic “I’m not Jewish,” over and over. I told them in Arabic that I was an American journalist who “loved Palestine.” They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I’ll never forget.

Even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100% of Israel – not just the occupation of east Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution and they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back “their” land. The ongoing desire of Palestinians to wipe Israel off the map is unproductive and backward-looking and the West must be very careful not to encourage it.

I know a lot of Jewish-Israelis who are willing to share the land with Muslim Palestinians, but for some reason finding a Palestinian who feels the same way was near impossible. If the Palestinians are given their own state in the West Bank, who’s to say they wouldn’t elect Hamas, an Islamist group committed to Israel’s destruction? That’s exactly what happened in Gaza in democratic elections in 2006. Having Hamas in control of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem would be suicide for Israel. And no country can be expected to consent to its own destruction. Read full article at JPost

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Bret Stephens of WSJ looks at the central obsession of contemporary global politics and its least examined obsession, Palestinian statehood.

Diplomats from some 70 countries will assemble in Paris on Sunday for another Mideast conference, intended to preserve the two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians. The timing is not accidental: With five days to go in the Obama administration, there are whispers that the conference may lead to another U.N. Security Council resolution, this time setting out parameters for an eventual Palestinian state.

The question is: For what?

Would a Palestinian state serve the cause of Mideast peace? This used to be conventional wisdom, on the theory that a Palestinian state would lead to peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors, easing the military burdens on the former and encouraging the latter to address their internal discontents.

Today the proposition is ridiculous. No deal between Jerusalem and Ramallah is going to lift the sights of those now fighting in Syria, Iraq or Yemen. Nor will a deal reconcile Tehran and its terrorist proxies in Lebanon and Gaza to the existence of a Jewish state.

Aren’t the Palestinians entitled to a state? Maybe. But are they more entitled to one than the Assamese, Basques, Baloch, Corsicans, Druze, Flemish, Kashmiris, Kurds, Moros, Native Hawaiians, Northern Cypriots, Rohingya, Tibetans, Uyghurs or West Papuans – all of whom have distinct national identities, legitimate historical grievances and plausible claims to statehood? What gives Palestinians the preferential claim?

Comparisons aside. Would a Palestinian state be good for Palestinian people? That’s a more subjective judgment. But a telling figure came in a June 2015 poll conducted by the Palestinian Center for Public Opinion, which found that a majority of Arab residents in East Jerusalem would rather live as citizens with equal rights in Israel than in a Palestinian state.

But isn’t a Palestinian state a necessity for Israel? Can it maintain its Jewish and democratic character without separating itself from the Palestinians?

In theory, Israel would be well-served living alongside a sovereign Palestinian state that lived in peace with its neighbors. But Israelis don’t live in theory. They live in a world where Israeli prime ministers made good-faith offers of Palestinian statehood and were met with rejection and violence.

These are the three sons of Noah: and of them was the whole earth overspread. Genesis 9:19

The source of 70 nations is the 70 grandsons of Noah listed in the Bible in Genesis 9 and 10.

They have said, Come, and let us cut them off from being a nation; that the name of Israel may be no more in remembrance. Psalm 83:4

High-ranking officials from 70 nations of the world will gather in Paris on January 15th in an attempt to force Israel to accept a two-state solution with the Palestinian Authority. By so doing, they will be fulfilling a momentous Biblical prophecy foretold thousands of years ago.

When Israeli statesman Shimon Peres passed away in September, leaders and dignitaries from 70 nations gathered in Jerusalem to pay their last respects. The symbolism is no mere coincidence; the very same number of representatives will gather in Paris, but this time to deny the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel.

“Everyone knows already what the purpose of the conference is: it will be used as another opportunity to try to impose a settlement on Israel and avoid direct negotiations between Israel and it’s neighbors,” Rabbi Avraham Arieh Trugman, director of Ohr Chadash Torah Institute, told Breaking Israel News. “What’s interesting is that it isn’t just one or two enemies with a specific grudge, like the Arabs or the Nazis. It is 70 nations, which in Torah terms, means all of the nations,” explained Rabbi Trugman.

Israeli police have arrested nine people, including relatives of the Palestinian truck driver who rammed his vehicle into a crowd of Israeli soldiers at a Jerusalem tourist spot and killed four of them, officials said.

The five family members of Fadi Ahmad Hamdan al-Qunbar, 28, were arrested in a raid in the Jabel Mukaber neighborhood of East Jerusalem, where he lived, police spokeswoman Luba Samri said.

Qunbar killed three Israel Defense Forces cadets and an officer Sunday at the bustling Armon Hanatziv promenade in the Talpiot neighborhood before he was shot dead. Sixteen people were injured in the attack.

On Monday, Palestinians hurled rocks and incendiary devices at authorities as they placed concrete slabs to block entrances and check vehicles in the West Bank and Jerusalem. NYPost

Two of the soldiers killed were American.

Erez Orbach, 20, of Alon Shvut in the Etzion bloc south of Jerusalem was an American citizen, Haaretz reported, citing a U.S. Embassy official. He holds U.S. citizenship through his mother, according to the newspaper, citing a family member. Orbach was the oldest of six brothers.

Shira Tzur, 20, of Haifa, had American-born parents, according to Haaretz, which cited a soldier in her unit. INN

Four Israelis soldiers have been killed and 15 wounded in a terrorist truck attack in Jerusalem on Sunday.

Shocking video from the scene shows the driver reversing back over the soldiers, trapping ten under his wheels, during the sickening attack on Sunday.

Chaos broke out at the scene when the truck ploughed through the crowd, with hundreds of soldiers having arrived there as part of a tour for troops about the history of Jerusalem. ‘They got off the bus, and as they were getting off the bus and getting organised, he took advantage.’

Medics who attended the scene said that three of the victims were women, while all four were in their 20s. Police confirmed the suspected terrorist had been ‘neutralised’ after his windscreen was covered in bullets. DailyMail

“It is with excitement that we are announcing the launch of the conference “International Law & the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism” that will be held between the 31st of March and the 2nd of April 2017 at University College Cork, a constituent university of the National University of Ireland.

This conference will be the first of its kind and constitutes a ground-breaking historical event on the road towards justice and enduring peace in historic Palestine. It is unique because, while most attention today is directed at Israel’s actions in the 1967 Occupied Territories, the conference seeks to expand the debate surrounding the nature of the State of Israel and the legal and political reality within it.

The conference will raise questions that link the suffering in historic Palestine to the manner of Israel’s foundation and its nature. It aims to generate a debate on legitimacy, responsibility and exceptionalism under international law as provoked by the nature of the Israeli state. It will also examine how international law could be deployed, expanded, and even re-imagined, in order to achieve peace and reconciliation based on justice.”

International Law & the State of Israel: Legitimacy, Responsibility and Exceptionalism Conference

Using a cloak of academic legitimacy, this conference is advocating for the elimination of Israel which its title infers with a focus on the wrongs of the establishment of Israel

A representative from the Israeli Embassy in Ireland responded harshly on Wednesday to news of a planned university conference exploring the elimination of the Jewish state.

Furthermore, the Embassy slammed the organizers of the conference for “promoting an unbalanced agenda within academic institutions that seeks to demonize and delegitimize Israel.”

“The prejudiced approach of such activists serves only to propagate hatred of the state and its people,” the spokesperson told The Algemeiner.

The conference has also aroused the ire of various Jewish and pro-Israel groups across Ireland, who sharply criticized UCC’s decision to host the event.

A spokesman from the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland called the event “an anti-Israel hate-fest,” adding, “Experience has shown that where a narrative aimed at the destruction of the Jewish state is allowed to flourish, antisemitism follows.”

A member of the Irish4Israel advocacy organization said that while his group is not pushing for the cancellation of the event, it “hope[s] that UCC will ensure balance and fairness and allow both sides to be heard, which could result in a far more successful conference, rather than creating an anti-Israel echo chamber.” Algemeiner

“This is not a peace conference. It’s a tribunal against the state of Israel, a conference whose whole point is to harm the security of Israel, its good name — a trial against Israel,” Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman said.

Israel said it will not attend.

On January 15th, representatives from 70 different countries will gather in Paris, France for an unprecedented global conference. The stated goal of this conference is to promote a “two-state solution” as the way that lasting peace will be brought to the Middle East.
In Israel, there is a tremendous amount of concern that whatever is agreed upon at this conference will immediately be used as the basis for a UN Security Council resolution that would permanently divide the land of Israel and create a Palestinian state.

But things would have to move very rapidly in order for that to happen, because Barack Obama’s time in the White House comes to an end on January 20th, and Donald Trump has already made it exceedingly clear that he would never support such a resolution.Prophecy News Watch

Israel Urges Jews To Leave France To Protest Peace Talks

Israel’s Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman urged all Jews in France to leave the European country as a sign of protest against an upcoming conference hosted by Paris that is looking to restart Israel-Palestine peace talks.

Representatives from 70 countries will gather in Paris for the Jan. 15 peace talks, which Israel said it will not attend.

He also described the upcoming conference as a new “Dreyfus trial.” Alfred Dreyfus, a French Jewish army captain, was wrongly convicted of espionage and treason in 1894. His trials divided the French society until he was cleared of all charges and reinstated in the army in 1906. His trials and conviction are viewed as a symbol of injustice and the anti-Semitic views in France at the time.

“This is not a peace conference. It’s a tribunal against the state of Israel, a conference whose whole point is to harm the security of Israel, its good name — a trial against Israel,” Lieberman said. “It’s a Dreyfus trial in a modern version, what they’re preparing there in Paris for January 15, with one difference. Instead of one Jew being on trial, it will be the entire Jewish people and the state of Israel.” IBT

January 15, 2017, is a Sunday. Monday, January 16, 2017, is a federal holiday, Martin Luther King day.

The next day it will be Obama’s turn. Obama can be expected to use the occasion of Martin Luther King Jr. Day to present the Palestinian war to annihilate Israel as a natural progression from the American Civil Rights movement that King led 50 years ago.

Finally, sometime between January 17 and 19, Obama intends for the Security Council to reconvene and follow the gang at the Paris conference by adopting Kerry’s positions as a Security Council resolution. That follow-on resolution may also recognize “Palestine” and grant it full membership in the UN. FrontPageMag

Dore Gold, ex-Israeli Foreign Ministry Director and the current president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-State solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;

Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;

This is saying Israel has no claim in East Jerusalem. Jerusalem is one unified city – east and west. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The holiest place in Judaism and predates Islam by 1,500 years. It is central to Judaism and Zionism. The only reason Muslim are interested in Jerusalem is because of the Jews care about Jerusalem.

Egypt

This resolution was first introduced by Egypt in coordination with the Palestinians.

On Thursday Egypt withdrew the resolution and it was postponed “potentially indefinitely” in response to a request by Egyptian President Abdel el-Sisi.

The United Nations Security Council vote on a draft resolution calling for an end to Jewish construction in all areas desired by the Palestinian Authority for its hoped-for state – and in fact, calling for an end to all Jewish communities in those areas – has been postponed. JewishPress

In a statement, it said the two men had agreed on “the importance of giving a chance for the new American administration to deal in a comprehensive way with the different aspects of the Palestinian issue”. BBC

President-elect Donald Trump: “As the United States has long maintained, peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians will only come through direct negotiations between the parties, and not through the imposition of terms by the United Nations,” Trump said in a written statement.

“This puts Israel in a very poor negotiating position and is extremely unfair to all Israelis,” he said. USAToday

Obama Administration

The Obama administration pushed for the vote.

New Zealand, Malaysia, Senegal and Venezuela — who stepped in to push for action after Egypt put the draft resolution on hold. AFP

Security Council Resolution Vote

US abstained and allowed UN Condemnation of Israel. The Obama administration did not use its veto to protect the United States closest Mideast ally.

An Israeli official on Friday “President Obama and Secretary Kerry are behind this shameful move against Israel at the U.N.,” the official said. “The U.S administration secretly cooked up with the Palestinians an extreme anti-Israeli resolution behind Israel’s back which would be a tail wind for terror and boycotts and effectively make the Western Wall occupied Palestinian territory,” he said calling it “an abandonment of Israel which breaks decades of US policy of protecting Israel at the UN.” WAPO

The UN Security Council passed a controversial anti-settlement resolution that would condemn Israel building in occupied territories.

The US abstained in the vote on the resolution — approved by 14 of the council’s 15 members and first introduced by Egypt in coordination with the Palestinians — which calls Israeli “settlement building” in East Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank a “flagrant violation under international law.”

A veto by the US — or any of the five permanent council members — would have killed it. NYPost

Responses to UN’s despicable resolution:

Israel has suspended its multimillion dollar contribution to a number of United Nations bodies and is reevaluating its relationship with the organization, after the UN Security Council passed a resolution on Israeli settlement construction.

“I instructed the Foreign Ministry to complete within a month a re-evaluation of all our contacts with the United Nations, including the Israeli funding of UN institutions and the presence of UN representatives in Israel,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu said on Saturday while addressing the nation.

“I have already instructed to stop about 30 million shekels ($7.8 million) in funding to five UN institutions, five bodies, that are especially hostile to Israel … and there is more to come,” he added without offering any further details. RT

November 29 is a significant date in the history of the state of Israel. The U.N. General Assembly adopted Resolution 181 recommending the partition of the British-mandate Palestine into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The British held a mandate until May 1948.

The image above is the newspaper The Palestine Post, which was established in 1932 in British-mandate Palestine. It survived a terror attack and became The Jerusalem Post.

There are at least five important takeaways from this dramatic chapter in history.

First, actions have consequences. The Arab world opted for confrontation, not compromise. They gambled and lost. They paid a price, as have all defeated aggressors in history. They could not have it both ways – losing a war they began, then claiming victimhood.

Second, as the Uruguayan envoy stated, another path was possible. There could have been two states living side by side – one Jewish, the other Palestinian (though the UN language at the time referred to an Arab, not a Palestinian, state) – in peaceful coexistence for the past 68 years. The Jews, joined by a clear majority in the international community, sought precisely that outcome, but the Arab world rejected it out of hand. It turned into a clash in this instance between Arab maximalism and Jewish pragmatism. The latter won out.

Third, the UN recognized the validity of a Jewish state. In November 1947, no one knew what the name of the state would be – it was only announced on May 14, 1948, the actual date of Israeli independence – but what was clear to all was that it would be a Jewish state, and rightly so. The Jewish people fully merited a sovereign home in their ancient land and had every right to chart their own destiny, the UN General Assembly affirmed. Insofar as there is some debate today about the “legitimacy” of a Jewish state, that question was, in fact, addressed 68 years ago by the UN General Assembly. Read full article at Algemeiner